The Cloud Harvester Catches and Stores Fresh Water from Fog

The Cloud Harvester is an ingenious device that is designed to catch and condense fog into water droplets which, in turn, run down a stainless steel mesh into a water storage container. The device represents a quantum leap in water collection efficiency, and it’s ideally suited for poor, rural, mountainous, coastal regions with little freshwater resources or infrastructure. It is almost as efficient as existing fog-harvesting devices that are currently on the market, but it is much smaller and more cost-efficient to produce and transport.

A key design challenge was to produce a lighter, longer-lasting product at a considerably lower cost. This was achieved by using light, rustproof aluminium, stainless steel, galvanized steel and tarpaulin; an open extrusion, the lowest tooling-cost method; a simple, straightforward manufacturing process; and a more transportable product.

With a potential output of 1 liter of fresh water per hour for each 10 square feet of mesh/tarpaulin, a $167 Cloud Harvester kit can produce around 45.6 litres per hour under optimum conditions. Even if the actual output was only 10% of this amount, a single net would deliver 5 liters per hour. According to the United Nations, a person needs 20 to 50 litres of water per day to ensure their basic needs for drinking, cooking and cleaning. Given that cloud harvesting clearly can make a significant contribution to water security in many areas of the world at a very low cost, the market for this product definitely exists.